“Express the 10 Commandments by holding a dance!”
The 3d Sunday in Lent, March 15th, 2008
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"Understanding the Ten Commandments as a set of burdens overlooks something essential. The commandments are not prefaced by the words, “Here are ten rules. We can also think of them as descriptions of the awesome life that wins out in the “zone” of God’s emancipation.
“Because the Lord is your God, you are free not to need any other gods.
“Because the Lord is your God, “You are free to rest on the seventh day.
“Because the Lord is your God, “You are free from the tyranny of lifeless idols.
“You are free from murder, stealing, and greediness as ways of establishing yourself.”
“Because the Lord is your God, you are free not to need any other gods.
“Because the Lord is your God, “You are free to rest on the seventh day.
“Because the Lord is your God, “You are free from the tyranny of lifeless idols.
“You are free from murder, stealing, and greediness as ways of establishing yourself.”
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The Ten Commandments: three versions
I’ll bet you didn’t know that there are three different versions of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, and none of them lists just ten.
There’s one list of 17 commandments in Exodus, another list of 21 commandments in Deuteronomy…
and a third list of 27 commandments later on in Exodus.
They got combined in various ways to come up with ten.
And the list we read this morning is the best known of the three.
What is a Biblical literalist to do?
Comparing the versions leaves those who hold a literalist view of scripture in more than a slight predicament.
How could God dictate three versions of the same law code, and supposedly to the same person?
Of course the reason for the discrepancies is that each was written at a different time, and in a different context.
Jesus and the Ten Commandments
As you know, when Jesus was asked about the Law, he came up with this answer:
Love God with all your heart and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
What you may not know is that he drew that “summary” from two separate places in the Hebrew Bible.
Words from our Presiding Bishop
Our presiding bishop had this to say about the two commandments that Jesus identified.
As Episcopalians, she said, we try to follow those two commandments.
We believe that they are central mandates, and that they are clear.
We are to love, welcome, and include all people into fellowship in which “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all are one in Christ.
It is in these two overarching commandments and central mandates from the Bible that we find the authority of Scripture.
We don’t look for that authority, she says, in any handful of scattered, isolated passages, selectively gathered to rationalize intolerance, cruelty, or injustice.
Words from Julia Childs
Some of us can remember Julia Childs.
She’s the woman who, through a public television series and a number of cookbooks, brought the art of French cooking into many American kitchens, including mine.
She was such a delightful person.
She is said to have claimed this about her theology:
"Good theology,” she said, “like a good recipe, does not waste words.
Love God and love your neighbor."
Those looking for an airtight, Bible-based ethical system undoubtedly find this too simple, to simplistic.
But of all the teachings of Jesus contained in the gospels, Jesus himself gave priority to these two commandments.
If we really want to know what Jesus would have us do, we have to take these two commandments as seriously as he did.
Ten 500-pound commandments
You may remember reading about Judge Roy Moore.
He was chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.
He waged a fight to keep a huge Ten Commandments monument in his courthouse, and he lost that battle!
Here’s an interesting fact that I ran across:
That monument weighs almost 5300 pounds.
That’s just over 500 pounds for each commandment.
The Judge had been lugging this 5000-pound albatross around from one public appearance to another on the back of a flatbed truck.
Whenever the truck came home to Alabama, it took a 57-foot I-beam crane, attached to the ceiling of a warehouse, to retrieve the monument from the truck.
Even this five-ton crane buckled visibly under the weight.
The point is...
There’s a point that can be made about all this.
In the popular religious consciousness, the Ten Commandments have somehow become huge burdens.
They have become heavy weights.
They have become 500-pound obligations.
For a lot of people, the Ten Commandments are all about constraining human behavior.
Most people can’t name all ten.
But at the same time, most people are sure that at the center of each commandment is a wagging finger, “Thou shalt not.”
For others, like the judge hauling the 5000-pound monument around, the commandments are heavy yokes, harnesses to be publicly placed around the necks of misbehaving neighbors.
That 5000-pound monument sitting on the bed of a truck is a perfect symbol of that heavy yoke.
In our ancient Old Testament history, Babylonian gods were heavy idols that had to be trucked around, and Isaiah was scathing in his criticism:
“Those hunks of wood are loaded on mules and have to be hauled off, wearing out the poor mules.
Dead weight, burdens that cannot bear burdens, hauled off to captivity.”1
Missing something essential
Understanding the Ten Commandments as a set of burdens overlooks something essential.
The commandments are not prefaced by the words,” “Here are ten rules.
Obey them.”
Instead, they are breathtaking announcements of freedom.
I am God, your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of a life of slavery.2
We’ll never get away from calling them the “Ten Commandments,” but there’s a whole other way to look at them.
We can also think of them as descriptions of the awesome life that wins out in the “zone” of God, the awesome life that wins out in the realm of God’s emancipation.
“Because the Lord is your God, you are free not to need any other gods.
“Because the Lord is your God, “You are free to rest on the seventh day.
“Because the Lord is your God, “You are free from the tyranny of lifeless idols.
“You are free from murder, stealing, and greediness as ways of establishing yourself.”
The Decalogue begins with good news of what the liberating God has done, and then it describes the shape of the resulting freedom.
Let’s hold a dance!
Dr. Thomas G. Long, a member of the faculty of Emery University’s Candler School of Theology, makes this suggestion.
If we really want to symbolize the presence of the Ten Commandments among us, we should hold a dance.
The good news of the God who set people free is the music.
The commandments are the dance steps of those who hear the music playing.
The commandments are not weights.
The commandments are wings, wings that make it possible to catch the “wind” of God’s spirit and fly.
The Ten Commandments: declarations of freedom
To see the Ten Commandments as declarations of freedom is far more true, far more authentic, far more fulfilling than hauling around tons of dreary obligation and worrying about whether the springs and shocks under a flatbed truck are going to hold up.
God spoke all these words:
“I am God, your God, who set you free, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a life of slavery.”
Jerry Brooks+
I’ll bet you didn’t know that there are three different versions of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, and none of them lists just ten.
There’s one list of 17 commandments in Exodus, another list of 21 commandments in Deuteronomy…
and a third list of 27 commandments later on in Exodus.
They got combined in various ways to come up with ten.
And the list we read this morning is the best known of the three.
What is a Biblical literalist to do?
Comparing the versions leaves those who hold a literalist view of scripture in more than a slight predicament.
How could God dictate three versions of the same law code, and supposedly to the same person?
Of course the reason for the discrepancies is that each was written at a different time, and in a different context.
Jesus and the Ten Commandments
As you know, when Jesus was asked about the Law, he came up with this answer:
Love God with all your heart and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
What you may not know is that he drew that “summary” from two separate places in the Hebrew Bible.
Words from our Presiding Bishop
Our presiding bishop had this to say about the two commandments that Jesus identified.
As Episcopalians, she said, we try to follow those two commandments.
We believe that they are central mandates, and that they are clear.
We are to love, welcome, and include all people into fellowship in which “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all are one in Christ.
It is in these two overarching commandments and central mandates from the Bible that we find the authority of Scripture.
We don’t look for that authority, she says, in any handful of scattered, isolated passages, selectively gathered to rationalize intolerance, cruelty, or injustice.
Words from Julia Childs
Some of us can remember Julia Childs.
She’s the woman who, through a public television series and a number of cookbooks, brought the art of French cooking into many American kitchens, including mine.
She was such a delightful person.
She is said to have claimed this about her theology:
"Good theology,” she said, “like a good recipe, does not waste words.
Love God and love your neighbor."
Those looking for an airtight, Bible-based ethical system undoubtedly find this too simple, to simplistic.
But of all the teachings of Jesus contained in the gospels, Jesus himself gave priority to these two commandments.
If we really want to know what Jesus would have us do, we have to take these two commandments as seriously as he did.
Ten 500-pound commandments
You may remember reading about Judge Roy Moore.
He was chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.
He waged a fight to keep a huge Ten Commandments monument in his courthouse, and he lost that battle!
Here’s an interesting fact that I ran across:
That monument weighs almost 5300 pounds.
That’s just over 500 pounds for each commandment.
The Judge had been lugging this 5000-pound albatross around from one public appearance to another on the back of a flatbed truck.
Whenever the truck came home to Alabama, it took a 57-foot I-beam crane, attached to the ceiling of a warehouse, to retrieve the monument from the truck.
Even this five-ton crane buckled visibly under the weight.
The point is...
There’s a point that can be made about all this.
In the popular religious consciousness, the Ten Commandments have somehow become huge burdens.
They have become heavy weights.
They have become 500-pound obligations.
For a lot of people, the Ten Commandments are all about constraining human behavior.
Most people can’t name all ten.
But at the same time, most people are sure that at the center of each commandment is a wagging finger, “Thou shalt not.”
For others, like the judge hauling the 5000-pound monument around, the commandments are heavy yokes, harnesses to be publicly placed around the necks of misbehaving neighbors.
That 5000-pound monument sitting on the bed of a truck is a perfect symbol of that heavy yoke.
In our ancient Old Testament history, Babylonian gods were heavy idols that had to be trucked around, and Isaiah was scathing in his criticism:
“Those hunks of wood are loaded on mules and have to be hauled off, wearing out the poor mules.
Dead weight, burdens that cannot bear burdens, hauled off to captivity.”1
Missing something essential
Understanding the Ten Commandments as a set of burdens overlooks something essential.
The commandments are not prefaced by the words,” “Here are ten rules.
Obey them.”
Instead, they are breathtaking announcements of freedom.
I am God, your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of a life of slavery.2
We’ll never get away from calling them the “Ten Commandments,” but there’s a whole other way to look at them.
We can also think of them as descriptions of the awesome life that wins out in the “zone” of God, the awesome life that wins out in the realm of God’s emancipation.
“Because the Lord is your God, you are free not to need any other gods.
“Because the Lord is your God, “You are free to rest on the seventh day.
“Because the Lord is your God, “You are free from the tyranny of lifeless idols.
“You are free from murder, stealing, and greediness as ways of establishing yourself.”
The Decalogue begins with good news of what the liberating God has done, and then it describes the shape of the resulting freedom.
Let’s hold a dance!
Dr. Thomas G. Long, a member of the faculty of Emery University’s Candler School of Theology, makes this suggestion.
If we really want to symbolize the presence of the Ten Commandments among us, we should hold a dance.
The good news of the God who set people free is the music.
The commandments are the dance steps of those who hear the music playing.
The commandments are not weights.
The commandments are wings, wings that make it possible to catch the “wind” of God’s spirit and fly.
The Ten Commandments: declarations of freedom
To see the Ten Commandments as declarations of freedom is far more true, far more authentic, far more fulfilling than hauling around tons of dreary obligation and worrying about whether the springs and shocks under a flatbed truck are going to hold up.
God spoke all these words:
“I am God, your God, who set you free, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a life of slavery.”
Jerry Brooks+
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